The Gift of the Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, Speaking in Tongues and Prophecy, Part 6

As a sort of introductory note before moving on to passages from the Epistles, one of the arguments used by some who dismiss Pentecostal-charismatic teaching is that they ”just” “have” the books of Acts and 1 Corinthians. The “reasoning” behind this dismissal is:  Acts speaks of the earliest days of the church, when things were just getting started and thus things done were not necessarily intended to be the long-term norm for the church; 1 Corinthians was addressed to a church that was a mess, and things the Corinthians did should not be regarded as anything like normal. While it is correct that the book of Acts is about the earliest beginnings of the ~2,000 year history of Christianity, there is no explicit Scriptural basis for Cessationists' dismissal. There is no express statement to the effect that the book of Acts was a never-to-be-repeated transitional period. To the contrary, it can be seen in several of Paul's Epistles that these gifts were part of the life of the church throughout New Testament times. As for 1 Corinthians, that letter is indeed an example – not the only such – of Paul writing to correct serious problems in a church. While obviously, it would be a mistake to emulate the problems and errors of the churches in Corinth or Colossae, Paul's corrective teaching should be accepted as worth applying today (is is done with the books of Galatians or Colossians); that would, of course, include the large portions of 1 Corinthians  12, 13, and 14 Cessationists want to ignore or relegate to an irrelevant past. As for the idea that  Pentecostals and charismatics ”just” “have” the books of Acts and 1 Corinthians, well …